I have an idea for a book I will never write. I may just steal Borges’s beautiful move: writing a short story that is a review of a nonexistent book, outlining its key ideas. Or maybe I’ll add a new meta-level of laziness and just outline the Borgesian short story I will never write.

This never-to-be-written short story will be a fictional review of the never-to-be-written book Designing Hat, which is, of course, an allusion to DeBono’s actually-written pop-biz classic Six Thinking Hats. In this book DeBono advises strategic hat changes to address various situations. My book, however recommends putting on your one designing hat and never taking it off whenever approaching any problem involving human beings organizing themselves to do anything.

This single move, I’ll argue, can clear up all kinds of hellish nonsense we all detest. It won’t solve everything — no method can — but it can dramatically improve our chances of making real progress. In the process, it can reduce everyday hostility and nihilism while increasing solidarity and goodwill.

In the grand tradition of inflating the importance of design, I will insist that design thinking is effective far beyond its usual applications. Since almost everything we do is a variation on “problems involving human beings organizing themselves to do anything”, the advice is more or less to superglue your designing hat onto your head.

Political problems, from the pettiest household squabbles to international crises, should be addressed as design problems. Even if we are not hands-on participants in shaping domestic or foreign policy, our conversations about these issues will improve if we approach them in a designerly manner. And meetings, too… Ninety-five percent of meetings could be vastly improved if approached as design collaborations.

The review will offer a succinct summary of each chapter, showing how adopting designerly attitudes and practices makes everything better:

• Segment people in reference to a clear purpose
• Go to the reality you want to change and observe it for yourself
• Ask people to teach you about their lives
• Fall in love with problems, not solutions (I think Marty Cagan coined this?)
• Win alignment; never resort to coercion
• Do not argue if you can prototype and test
• Do not debate; compare options
• Make smart tradeoffs

There are definitely more chapters, and I’ll keep adding them as they occur to me. Please comment if you have ideas for chapters.